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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

UC Davis student founds School of Freedom to educate Afghan girls amid Taliban ban

Walid Jailani launches the non-profit to provide education in support of over 1,200 students and empower local educators

 

Walid Jailani, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major and education minor, founded the School of Freedom — a non-profit organization dedicated to providing education to young Afghan girls who have outgrown the limited schooling opportunities available to them in Afghanistan. 

Jailani shared that he was deeply moved to help young girls in Afghanistan after seeing their videos posted on TikTok. In these videos, they revealed that they were unable to continue their education beyond the seventh grade as a result of new bans implemented by the Taliban.

“I showed my brother and said, ‘This is making me very sad, I want to do something about it,’ and he joked and said, ‘Oh, just start a school,’” Jailani said.

The School of Freedom was originally the Women’s Education Movement (WEM), a UC Davis on-campus club that Jailani started as a second-year in 2023. Jailani and other undergraduate members began tutoring girls in Afghanistan, initially teaching only English-language courses to a classroom of 30 students. Eventually, they had 1,200 students sign up, allowing them to create separate English courses: Elementary English, Intermediate English and Advanced English.

“Depending on their level and proficiency, we placed them in those classes and UC Davis students were teaching them,” Jailani said. “They tutored these girls for about 13 to 14 months themselves and so did I. It was a good time.”

Jailani also said that the dedication of the School of Freedom volunteers helped to create an established program. 

“Props to my volunteers, they would be waking up at 8 a.m. every day — they don’t even wake up for their classes at 8 a.m. — and they were ready to teach,” Jailani said. “It was very interesting for me to see them wake up and be so excited to teach and give back to these girls and this community when they wouldn’t even want to wake up for their own 8 a.m. classes.”

Word quickly spread about their classes, and soon, Afghan teachers who had lost their jobs began reaching out to Jailani, eager to contribute. With their support, Jailani established the School of Freedom, creating a platform for Afghan educators to teach a variety of subjects to Afghan students, expanding the curriculum beyond just English.

“At that time it was two different branches,” Jailani said. “We had the Women’s Education Movement that was being run in the [United States] and the School of Freedom that was taught voluntarily by teachers that lost their jobs in Afghanistan.”

The Women’s Education Movement aimed to provide crucial financial support to Afghan teachers and students through fundraising and donations. To ensure the most efficient use of its limited budget, the organization developed a financial aid application system to assess and prioritize students with the greatest need.

“We paid for their internet and anything else we could help them out with,” Jailani said. “For students, we set up a financial aid system. We were getting donations from the Willow Way Tutoring Club. […] They would give us a budget every month to pay out 30 to 40 students for Wi-Fi money because some students couldn’t afford it and we wanted to accommodate them any way we could.” 

Eventually, the Women’s Education Movement and the School of Freedom united as one, with the School of Freedom being officially registered as a non-profit organization. The School of Freedom now serves approximately 1,200 students and has 35 teachers, including a principal and vice principal. The school follows the official Afghan curriculum, while UC Davis student members focus on management-related tasks, including fundraising and outreach efforts to enroll more students.

Robina Haqiqi, a fourth-year psychology major, serves as the vice president of the School of Freedom at UC Davis, leading projects and supporting Jailani in carrying out their mission to teach. She emphasized that the School of Freedom is not just about teaching a set curriculum but also about a larger social impact.

“This work has been deeply meaningful to me because it represents hope and resilience,” Haqiqi said. “Knowing that we’re making a huge difference in the lives of girls who are denied basic opportunities motivates me every day. It’s a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable challenges, education can still be a tool for freedom and change.”

The School of Freedom’s students have already been inspired to shape the future, according to Mariam Saleh, a fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major. Acting as the organization’s social media coordinator, Saleh had the privilege of connecting with students one-on-one and sharing their stories with the rest of the world.

“One thing that inspired me from the interviews [with the students] is that a lot of the girls wanted to become journalists, which is very powerful because they want to use their voice to make a change as well,” Saleh said. “Overall, I am very excited for what [the] School of Freedom can do, and [I am] hoping it can create a bigger and more powerful change.”

Moving forward, UC Davis members of the School of Freedom club are working on launching a youth program for Middle Eastern and other refugee communities in California to provide mentorship, mental health resources and tutoring support for high school-aged students. 

“They come to this country and they might be good at science and math but struggle with the language barrier,” Jailani said. “As far as mentorship, most of the members here are refugees or immigrants and have gone through this process themselves and are now at UC Davis. We want these [high school] students to get connected with our undergrads so they can see and know, ‘If they did it, I can do it too.’ […] We want to introduce them to trade schools, community college[s] and four-year universities to get them thinking about continuing their education.”

The School of Freedom organization is eager to welcome new volunteers. Students who are interested in becoming members or donating to their cause can find information through their organization’s website or by emailing admin@schooloffreedom.org

“Mostly, we are looking for people who can help us with fundraisers, people who can [do] outreach [and] people who can help us get donations,” Jailani said, “Once our youth program starts, we are looking for people who can help us with presentations, help out with workshops and tutor students [who reside in California].”

Jailani emphasized that the School of Freedom would not exist without the help and support from his peers, saying that the collective strength of their teamwork and shared commitment to the cause was the foundation of its success.

“I want to thank Sadia Haidari, the principal and co-founder of the Afghanistan part of School of Freedom, Moheb Salemi, who helped me out to turn this entire thing to a non-profit, and Robina Haqiqi, Jasmine Alhuniti, Mariam Saleh and Ghezal Karim for being there since day one and now help me with the management on board,” Jailani said.

 

Written by: Jalan Tehranifar — features@theaggie.org

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